hello i'm john hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture president obama hopes to enforce the buffett rule on the nation's wealthiest working people like warren buffett's secretary who pays about thirty six percent in federal income taxes shouldn't pay more than billionaires like buffett who last year paid about eighteen percent just how much longer will we have to listen to republicans insist if we just keep taxes insanely low on the rich and donors then the jobs fairy will one day visit america and thousands of victims of the recession took their concerns to the street wall street to be exact so will justice be served for the people screwed by the corporate bankers.

you need to know this president obama gets his way than the gravy train is over for america's millionaires billionaires and transnational corporations today the president unveiled his deficit reduction plan a proposal that will slash four trillion dollars out of our nation's deficit over the next ten years and completely pay for the american jobs act that was introduced in congress last plan does this primarily by ending special tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires including the bush tax cuts for the rich. this plan eliminates tax loopholes the primarily go to the wealthiest taxpayers and biggest corporations. tax breaks that small businesses and middle class families don't get this plan to ask the wealthiest americans to go back to paying the same rates that they paid during the one thousand nights before the bush tax cuts in what's being called the buffett rule the president's plan also forces the richest among us wall

street billionaire hustlers to people like wal-mart walton heirs and paris hilton we have much of their income sitting on their butts around city or in the swimming pool collecting dividend checks it only be a fifteen percent tax rate maximum tax rate to pay the same rate as every hardworking americans. middle class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires that's pretty straightforward it's hard to argue against that warren buffett's secretary should pay a higher tax rate than warren buffett and then the president turned his sights on republicans who've already made their opposition to tax increases on the rich well known. it is wrong that in the united states of america a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns fifty thousand dollars should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in fifty million dollars anybody who says we can't change the tax code to correct that they want to assign some plates to

protect every single tax loophole so long as they live they should be called out they should have to defend that unfairness and if their place to keep that kind of unfairness in place. they should remember the last time i checked the only pledge that really matters the pledge we take up old constitution but those same republicans preempted the president's speech by going on t.v. yesterday and parroting the same old right wing talking point class warfare take it away. we tax investment in job creation more you will get less of it and like i said this is this looks like to me and not a very good sign because it looks like the president wants to move down the class warfare path class warfare will simply divide this country more well attack job creators divide people and it doesn't grow the economy so says the guy whose budget proposal raises taxes on poor and middle class americans and the president spoke

directly to paul ryan's accusations of class warfare today. we're already hearing the usual defenders of these kinds of loopholes saying this is just class warfare i reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare i think it's just the right thing to do all i'm saying is that those who have done well including me should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made our success possible this is not class warfare. it's met with a political showdown over taxes now looming between president obama and republicans the american people spoken to a new gallup poll nearly three quarters of americans support a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes both tax increases and spending cuts as the president proposed in fact only twenty six that's just twenty six percent of republicans support the spending cuts only approach being pushed by

republicans like paul ryan john boehner eric cantor so did we just see the defining issue of the two thousand and twelve election campaign to tax the rich or not to tax the rich for more on this let's turn to our panel i'm joined by heather sermon conservative strategist and associate of loose solutions and roger hickey co-director of the campaign for america's future welcome you both and thanks for joining us again thank you. first of all why do so many billionaires pay lower federal income taxes than average working people i mean among the forbes four hundred last year the average income tax rate federal income tax rate was eighteen but it was actually paid it was eighteen percent how did that how did we get here. well i think we do have loopholes that need be closed i will agree but that however the warren buffets of the world are still the rare ones you know we still do have a progressive tax code top four hundred paid an average of eighteen percent but it's not really the top one percent of current on average pay forty percent top one

percent are not the billionaires or that i'm all for people versus the millionaires that president obama's top the top one tenth of one percent you know that that's that's what he's talking about those are the people who are who are making most of their money from dividends of income or stock income or interest before you listen it's a combination of the loopholes that you're talking about. the fact that many of these people pay to get their income from capital gains which is taxed a fifteen percent rate and the massive tax cuts that the bush administration gave to very high earners and got as into the deficit situation that we're the conservatives are trying to get us to focus on so to to get to the politics of this rather than making it a debate about whether or not we should we can you and i have done that many times it will and i'm sure we will again. is the president going to get a tax increase throughout the representatives that is controlled by republican

party. one hundred percent of the members to the best of my knowledge proven wrong have signed grover norquist pledge and have said that they will put their pledge above the constitution well the reality is i don't believe in the democrats really already born able to pass something like that when they controlled congress so it's an unpopular thing to pass or pass the state hounds really good when you're running for reelection but when it comes down to the brass tacks it's really hard to put something together that is palatable to members who are also seeking reelection so you're saying no i'm saying i'm sure you know as well because we have a very conservative house of representatives right now that. this is a very important thing to. that obama is doing because he is changing the subject he is the conservatives wanted to cut social security and medicare they wanted to focus entirely on direct kone in cuts to social programs obama is saying to the american people hey look there's another way to do this and first of all

a week ago we said it's jobs getting the economy growing that's the big speech that he made in the last week getting your pick on a growing getting people to be making them taxpayers instead of. recipients of aid and secondly we've got to make the wealthy pay their fair share but if we don't get . the economy growing. then they were all in trouble and we're not going to get out of this mess i would submit it's not just jobs slaves have jobs it's well paint jobs you know rick perry had has created in the last ten years texas created the last ten years more minimum wage jobs than all the other states combined it's like the worst kinds of jobs are being created but let's also remember that you know these millionaires and billionaires that president obama is talking about it's not as if all their money is under a mattress somewhere their money is being invested their money is being put into jobs it's being made it's putting put into you know job creation and making jobs

better and making better jobs for people who want to it's not i know it's a great talking point to say these corporate jets and you know they're like paris hilton lounging around the pool or but the reality is most of these millionaires and billionaires are hard working folks you know if you take the five wall there's and turn them into one person they're richer than pretty much even those poor people you're talking about tom even if all of their money went to the u.s. government we'd still be a hole that's not the solution it's not the solution to make knowledge i'm not saying that's the solution and i'm position i'm positing that is really more of a moral issue when i heard his his proposals i mean you know bill clinton brought us a balanced budget his proposal would bring in one and a half trillion dollars or. senators that's not chickenfeed let's also not forget that he didn't really talk at all about his health care plan that was rammed down our throats that we're not going to see and tell if someone is reelected our someone is elected in two thousand and twelve and we at a huge cost that we are going to happen there and it's going to make our depth even

more to the point roger the cuts what specifically are the cuts in medicare and medicaid that the president is proposing or do we not know because already the progressive caucus is pushing back and they're saying essentially the same thing eric cantor and and john boehner are saying about tax increases is you know you're going to do this no way but the good news from my point of view is that he's not changing the eligibility age for medicare he's not telling people now you got to wait until you're sixty seven to get two years oh no and soon health care when people are holding by their fingernails waiting to get eligible in this bad economy that's all retiring later doesn't change in the structure of medicare at this time would be disastrous for lots of millions of people but we don't know exactly what's in that black box he says he's going to continue the health care reform. ideas that he's already put in place or is or about to be put in place to help make this

economy and this health care economy more efficient. well we'll see we'll see but it sounds to me like he's not for example we know that medicare would save six hundred eighty billion dollars over ten years if they were simply allowed to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical kind that still here that's in there is that something that he's putting on this and that's in the in the speech and it's in the in the proposals that he's put forward that's a medicare change that i would be going home and face exactly if if this economy was as efficient its health care system is france or switzerland or germany we would not have a deficit problem it's the wasteful health care system that is driving the medicare problem not the up. way around so a rapid fire question is are we going to have thirty seconds i'm curious about the take both of you in order for the president to use this successfully as a campaign tool much less a legislative two he's going to have to absolutely hold firm all the way to the end and i compromise which has never to the best of my knowledge happened before you

think you'll do it yes he has no choice the republicans are not going to compromise with him so he's he's freed of that desire to go and make make great red with the republicans they are not going to help him i would argue that if that's all the speech was today it was a campaign speech he is asking for people to get behind him he needs a speech like this and he needs to have many things just like this because it's a group of rating is down the down as as you know one of those people in his base we've been we had was and i know this is helpful but that's ok heather rogers thank you both for being with us much appreciate it republicans will likely fight the president's proposal to nail but this time president obama has a familiar ally on his side his base could have been clamoring for the sort of defense of the middle class for three years now there's a new ad from move on or gets up and running right now. i'm warren buffett's secretary and i pay a higher tax rate than my billionaire pots i'm lauren buffett secretary warren buffett's secretary i have three kids make forty thousand dollars

a year and i contribute a greater percentage of my income and many billion is a million and most americans want congress to raise taxes on the wealthy but the g.o.p. refuses to do it why call congress and tell them restrictions on millionaires and billionaires so all americans pay their fair share you get the message to call congress. is time for a daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here is that is question will the buffett rule get past your choices are yes we will tax the oligarchy or no that's class warfare on america as warren buffett said it's his class the rich the twenty around samarra dot com let us know what you think the poll will be open until tomorrow. crazy alert move over birth errors there are l.

in iceland according to a new report out of the university of iceland a majority of icelanders believe in elves sixty two percent of respondents believe that either possibly likely or definitely exist also seventy two percent of icelanders it was same way about ghosts iceland has always been a tourist for its citizens believe in supernatural forces more than most other nations across here america were notorious for believing in fox so-called news myths like president obama not being born in the united states one point fifty one percent of republicans believe president obama was born in a different country or has a donald trump as immediately dispatched as a crackpot team of a crack team of private investigators iceland if i doubt once and for all if else really do exist. coming up thousands of protesters united this weekend on wall street demanding a new deal for main street residents chronicled by reading banks toure's their peaceful demonstrations bringing real justice in america where the banks are so

rich and powerful that the untouchable. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it through to be made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask me do you r t question more. fun. for.

looks like more and more americans are tired of being screwed by the banks trues who in fact that our body politic over a thousand demonstrators converged on wall street over the weekend to demand banks to be held accountable for their high crimes that according to the world bank at impoverished sixty four million people around the planet. clued in a lot of americans the demonstrators are also demanding major structural reforms to our economy adbusters is the organization the first conceived of the idea to occupy wall street and point to full disclosure i've written for adbusters over the years their call for the occupation on their website reads on september seventeenth we want to see twenty thousand people flooding the lower manhattan set up tents kitchens peaceful barricades and i could buy wall street for a few months once there we shall incessantly repeat our one simple demand and so

barack obama capitulates so will this kind of activism produce some real change in awakening tens of millions of americans who've been screwed by wall street for more on this and joined by senior reporter and blogger at think progress welcome back thanks for having me thomas it was great to have you here with us what's the current status of the wall street occupation sure and so it started on saturday and we had certainly over thousand people come down to sort of the financial district new york city police stopped them from one always to new york stock exchange with the officer they wouldn't arrest if they stayed outside the street is that we've had since then hundreds of people camped out in the streets in new york we have people ordering them pizza from across the world you can actually go on the web say occupy wall street or you want to donate to some of the efforts to help them out the rapper lupe a fiasco did a pretty tense for people to stay there and i had a friend actually a colleague who is in new york over the weekend and told me that it's largely a very young crowd it's student sort of people expect to engage in sort of long term activism that's that's that's actually great. how do what was the spark how

did it wasn't it wasn't this ad busters article or a call to action we had adbusters actually is the one that sort of organize the day this is the two hundred seventeen this very sort of a twitter hash tag for the time sort of and knowledge as to what would happen on wall street what's happening in the rest of the world or even what happened in wisconsin which is sort of a call that action against sort of really one of the main culprits of what happened to the economy right now i mean people forget they hit the recession as the. sort of the sort of in a more sort of natural phenomenon are they that like maybe it was the government's probably the recession started because of a lot of financial misdeeds by the financials like there by wall street and the lack of regulation in the financial sector and wall street and there were a lack of proper oversight of those this institution that it caused a lot of pain to us and now we're saying that you know maybe we need to start bringing some of that anger to that it seems that there are two necessary remedies here one is the obama justice department prosecuting some people and because there

are obviously was that have been broken and the second is just pretty straightforward legislative stuff like we'd see in glass steagall. what are the odds of either of those happening and do you think that these folks will improve those odds unfortunately i mean this sort of legislative changes that we needed which really also included what senator sherrod brown and kauffman try to do which is break up the beings in the first place probably not entirely likely but i still think what they're doing here is really important because it's refocusing the public attention and anger at the people where they cope with what we're going through right now and i think you know focus a more thing sort of want obama was talking about in terms of shared sacrifice one thing i would really like to see him talk about and maybe want to be in these protesters can take up in addition to we regulated the banks and getting financial fraud settled is a financial transaction tax which would be a tax on small tax or even a moderate sized tax on the sort of the financial trade that the industry makes that would do very little that actually her would raise an enormous amount of money

and actually it would take back some of the money that we use from the federal reserve and from the tire store to let these people continue to live their lavish lifestyles and preserve the investors that executives you know while the rest of the economy crumble you know i wrote an op ed for the four years ago for common dreams calling for the return to the securities transaction excise tax and steps tax that was banned i believe in sixty four in its most recent incarnation it was put in place in thirty five by the roosevelt administration to pay for the s.e.c. . and by sixty five and sixty's it was generating so much extra money so you know one tenth of one percent on a return or it was a flat rate whatever it was a small amount in every transaction it was the jury so much extra money that l.b.j. just going to live off but anyway i agree i think that that would be a great thing. when when the deputy always meeting in seattle. there was a sense i think among many people in the united states and around the world. the actions

of the world trade organization were very unjust and they were the international bankers and the you know imposed austerity and things like that and yet a few stars if you crazies maybe that's not quite the right way to describe it but you know the the people who dress themselves in black and hoods and started throwing firebombs and smashing windows became the story and i think the wong term consequence of that really hurt the movement. what do you think the chances are of that sort of thing happening here and what's being done to prevent that happening when i think the people here would really discipline them in the entirety of the arrests that have happened there that being because people are going to not there is the area where police are saying you can't block traffic here or you know you can't disrupt the sort of the normal commercial activity which is happening which is honestly a lot of what they probably want to do but it certainly isn't a violent it isn't really making them look bad so i never am very disciplined about you know the other the other half of the equation is will the media actually cover them if they're not misbehaving and being violent that's actually

a very famous story from a writer and u.k. telling a reporter. you know a peaceful demonstration a few months ago no no media came and all of you are here because the rioting and i think that part of the equation is the one the protesters have to make sure to be civil and disciplined but then the media has to be attentive to people speaking out like well that's over the weekend i was a keynote speaker to the best of my in madison wisconsin there were eight thousand progressives and showed up you know over the keynoters with me and bernie sanders and jim hightower and and cornel west and not one single network i mean it was normal but that you know no national coverage eight thousand people if you did an eight hundred tea partiers you know and. so let's let's hope it doesn't take that and finally liberals pizza it's working just like they did in madison you know i've actually heard on twitter i can't verify this but they've actually ordered twenty hundred dollars worth of pizza that they. the demonstration everyone across the world is calling in and ordering pizza for the for the demonstrators and i can tell you that definitely one place i'd probably be in support of of this so you can

google librettos people to get their phone number in order barely they're getting orders small over the world so to keep this thing going to go a lot of this in sympathy with the idea of calling out wall street said thanks so much for dropping by so it always great to hear the banks there's a stretch of this nation of the brain putting more and more americans in desperation now the backlash against the oligarchy may be just around the corner as the wall street demonstrators declared it's time for democracy not corporatocracy. just. yet but it's time for the good the bad of the very very. well i really believe the good. alec baldwin star actor of the t.v. hit show the hit t.v.

show thirty rock was scheduled to appear at last night's emmy awards even pre-tape the skit before the show including a joke about rupert murdoch in the phone hacking scandal fox network which aired the emmys and is owned by rupert murdoch's censor the joke and cut it out of the show completely so in response baldwin quake out of the emmys took to his twitter account to say fox did kill my news corp joke which sucks because i think it would have made them look better a little if i were in bash and mashed in a scandal where i hacked phones of families of innocent crime victims really for profit i'd want that to go away to. the bad senate minority leader mitch mcconnell if you thought republican leadership was going to call for a rebuke of the calls for death that have echoed out of republican debates lately i think you'd get appearing on meet the press yesterday senator mcconnell was asked whether the audience cheering for rick perry's guy high record of executions and

for policies that would allow the death of uninsured americans recent republican debates troubled him. does the audience response in both cases trouble you as a republican. look we have a lot of people running for president who want to be a lot of debates a lot of things a lot of audience reactions i don't have any particular reaction to what's going on the republican campaign for president right now. applauding death is just fine for republicans. all the way from their so-called grassroots space to their leadership . since when did the so-called party a life evolve in the party of. and the very very ugly andrew breitbart the right wing hack journalist took to inciting violence against the left while speaking at a massachusetts tea party event. with you know we know number them and. and we have the guns and he thought breitbart was just making an ill

advised joke he immediately followed up that statement with this but i'm not going to. read it but maybe not. because you know with you. i guess when the right wing talking points fall short part can always resort to his walk that's a very very of. perilous kone alert what do you do when you're a small time crook and former cruise ship lounge singer who went into business with a partner now in prison and water radio station and a t.v. station the newspaper than another it is stationed in another t.v. station then another newspaper that a radio network in a t.v. network and he ended up owning about ninety five percent of all the media seen italy that's what silvio berlusconi did and then created his own political party ran for prime minister with his billions of the full support of his own only own

versions of fox news fox radio and fox newspaper and surprise he won three times the saga of the berlusconi sex scandals heated up again in italy over the weekend as newly released wiretaps of barrels going to telephone conversations dominated headlines all across italy the wiretaps were released at the conclusion of an investigation into entrepreneur. teenie a man who is accused of paying women to sleep with barrels goni at his homes. in two thousand and eight and he does and nine in transcripts of the wiretaps there was cronies quoted as telling parents meeting that last night i had a queue outside the door of the bedroom there were a lot of i only did eight because i could not do it any more listen all of ads are full here there's a lot won't go on even at gunpoint in another conversation recorded in september of two thousand and eight barrels going told terance he that he needed to reduce the flow of women for a few days because he had to use his words a terrible week coming up full of scheduled meetings with pope benedict nicolas

sarkozy i'm going to marital and gordon brown so what do we learn from this latest development well i guess despite the seventy four year old sexual rather than bragging isn't that much of a multi-tasking. coming up while many have turned a blind eye to. see mainstream media others have taken a deeper look into the real being of the nuclear crisis i'll be joined by those who've been affected most by this disaster after the break. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of people who made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery to see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.

talk about the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the nuclear disaster in japan has mutated into a serious human rights issue i guess panelists sure the.